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CHANGEABLE CHARLIE
CHAPTER I. Situation. It was one day when on a summer tramp that, entering a decentish„ town and looking about at the shop windows, I began to bethink me of the necessity that had fallen upon me, by the tear and wear, of the journey, of being at the expense of a new hat : so I entered a magazine of miscellaneous com¬modities, when who should astonish me in the person of the shopkeeper but my old pupil, Charlie Cheap ! Transition: "Merciful me, Charlie," said I; "who would have expected to find you at this trade ! I thought you had gone to the college to serve your time for a minister of the gospel." Retrospective Narrative: "Indeed," said Charlie, "that was once the intent ; but in truth, my head got rather confused with the lair and the logic. I had not the least conjugality to the Greek conjugations, and when I came to the Hebrew, that is read every word backwards, faith, I could neither read it back¬wards nor forwards, and fairly stuck, and grew a sticked minister. But I had long begun to see that the minister trade was a poor business, and that a man might wait for mustard till the meat was all eaten, and so I just took up a chop like my father be¬fore me ; and faith, Dominie, I'm making a fortune." Conclusion .• "Well," said I, "1 am really happy to hear it ; and I hope, besides that, that you like your employment." "I am quite delighted with the chop-keeping, Mr. Balgownie ; a very different life from chapping verbs in a cauld college. Besides, I am a respected man in the town ; nothing but Mr. Cheap here and Mrs. Cheap there, and ladies coming in at all hours of the day, and bowing and becking to me, and throwing the money to me across the counter I would not wonder if they should make me a baillie yet." "Well, I am really delighted, too," said I, "and, from my knowledge of baillies, I would not wonder in the least : so good-bye, Mr. Cheap. I think this hat looks very well on me." "Makes you ten years younger, sir. Good-bye ! wish you your health to wear it." CHAPTER II. Situation. It might be a twelvemonth after that I was plodding along a country road some ten miles from the fore-mentioned town, when, looking over the hedge by my side, I saw a team of horses pulling a plough towards me, and my cogitations were dis¬turbed by the yo-ing and yaw-ing of the man who followed it. Something struck me that I knew the voice, and when the last of the men came up I dis¬covered under the plush waistcoat and farmer's bonnet, my old friend, Charlie Cheap. Transition : "Soul and conscience!" cried he, thrust¬ing his clayey hand through the hedge and grasping mine, "if this is not my old master the Dominie ! " and truly he gave me the farmer's gripe, as if my hand had been made of cast metal. "What are you doing here, Charlie ? " said I; "why are you not minding your shop instead of marching there in the furrows at the plough-tail ? " "Chop!" said he ; "what chop ? Na, na, Dominie: I've gotten a better trade by the hand." "It cannot be possible, Charlie, that ye've turned farmer ? " . . . . Retrospective Narrative: "Do ye think I was going to be tied up to haberdrabbery all my days ? No, no, I knew I had a genius for farming ; the chop-keeping grew flat and unprofitable, a chiel from England set up next door to me, so a country customer took a fancy for a town life. I sold him my stock in trade, and he sold me the stock on his farm. He stepped in behind the counter, and I got behind the plough : so here I am, happier than ever ; besides, harkie ! I am making money fast." "Are you, really ? But how do you know that ? " "Can I not count my ten fingers ? Have I not figured it on black and white over and over again ? There's great profits with management such as mine, that I can assure you, sir." 'Bu how could you possibly learn 'farming ? That, I believe, is not taught at college." "Pooh, my friend, I can learn anything. Besides, my wife's mother was a farmer's daughter, and Lizzie herself understands farming already as if she was reared to it. She makes all the butter, and the children drink all the milk, and we live so happy ; birds singing in the morning, cows lowing at night, drinking treacle ale all day, and nothing to do but watch the corn growing. In short, farming is the natural state of man. Adam and Eve were a farmer and his wife, just like me and Lizzie Cheap ! " Conclusion: "But you'll change again shortly, I am afraid, Mr. Cheap." "That's impossible, for I've got a nineteen-years' lease. I'll grow gray as a farmer. Well, good-bye, Dominic. Be sure you give us a call the next time ye pass, and get a drink of our treacle ale." "Well, really, this is the most extraordinary thing," said I to myself, as I walked up the lane from the farmhouse. "I shall be curious to ascertain if he's going to stick to the farming till he's ruined." CHAPTER III. Situation: I thought no more of Changeable Charlie for above a year, when, coming towards the same neighborhood, I resolved to go a short distance out of my way to pay him a visit. My road lay across a clear country stream, which winded along a pleasant green valley beneath me ; and as I drew near the rustic bridge my ear caught the lively sound of a water-fall which murmured from a picturesque spot among opening woods, a little way above the bridge. A little mill-race, with its narrow channel of deep, level water, next attracted my notice ; and, presently after, the regular splash of a water-wheel and the boom of a corn-mill became objects of my meditative observation. The mill looked so quaint and rustic by the stream, the banks were so green and the water so clear, that I was tempted to wander towards it, down from the bridge, just to make the whole a sub¬ject of closer observation. A barefooted girl came forth from the house and stared in my face, as a Scottish lassie may be sup¬posed to do at a reasonable man. "Can you tell me," said I, willing to make up an excuse for my intrusion, "if this road will lead me to the farm of Longrigs, which is occupied by One Mr. Cheap ?" The lassie looked in my face with a thieve-less smile, and, with¬out answering a word, took a barelegged race into the mill. Presently a great lumbering miller came out, like a walking bag of flour from beside the hopper, and I immediately saw he was going to address me Transition: "You were asking, I think," he said, "after Charlie Cheap, of the Longrigs ?" "Yes," said I, "but his farm must be some miles from this. Perhaps, as you are the miller of the neighborhood, you can direct me the nearest road to it." The burly scoundrel first lifted up his eye-wink¬ers, which were clotted with flour, shook out about a pound of it from his bushy whiskers, and then burst into a laugh in my very face, as loud as the neighing of a miller's horse. "Ho, ho, hough ! " grinned he, coughing upon me a shower of flour. "Is it possible, Dominie, that ye dinna ken me ? " and, opening his mouth at least as wide as his own hopper, I began to recognize the exaggerated features of Changeable Charlie. "Well, really," said I, gazing at his grin, and the hills of flour that arose from his cheeks,—" really this beats everything ! And so, Charlie, ye're now turned into a miller ? " "As sure's a gun ! " said he. "Lord bless your soul, Dominic! Do you think I could bear to turn up dirt all my life ? No ! " . . . "But dear me, Mr. Cheap," said I, "what was it that put you out of the farm, where I thought you were so happy and making a fortune ? " Retrospective Narrative: "I was as happy as a man could be, and making money too, and nothing put me out of the farm, although I was quite glad of the change, but just a penny of fair debt—the which, you know, is a good man's vase—and a little civil argument about the rent. But everything turned out for the best, for Willie Hopper, the former miller, just ran awa the same week : I got a dead bargain of the mill, and so I came to reign in his stead. Am I not a fortunate man ? " • Conclusion : "Never was a man so lucky," said I; "but do you really mean to be a waiter on the mill-hopper all your days ? " "As long as wood turns round and water runs.— But, Lizzie," he added to his wife, "what are you standing glowering there for, and me like to choke? Gang and fetch us a jug of your best treacle ale." "It surely cannot be," said I to myself when I left the mill, "that Changeable Charlie will ever adopt a new profession noW, but live and die a miller." I was, however, entirely mistaken in my calculation, as I found before I was two years older ; though I have not time at this present sitting to tell the whole of Charlie's story. -ANDREW PICKENS.